ISIS has issued a disturbing ruling detailing who can have sex with female slaves

Members
of the minority Yazidi sect who were newly released hug each
other on the outskirts of Kirkuk April 8,
2015.Ako
Rasheed/Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Islamic State theologians have issued an
extremely detailed ruling on when "owners" of women enslaved by
the extremist group can have sex with them, in an apparent bid to
curb what they called violations in the treatment of captured
females.

The ruling or fatwa has the force of law and appears to go beyond
the Islamic State's previous known utterances on the subject, a
leading Islamic State scholar said. It sheds new light on how the
group is trying to reinterpret centuries-old teachings to justify
the sexual slavery of women in the swaths of Syria and Iraq it
controls.

The fatwa was among a huge trove of documents captured by U.S.
Special Operations Forces during a raid targeting a top Islamic
State official in Syria in May. Reuters has reviewed some of the
documents, which have not been previously published.

Among the religious rulings are bans on a father and son having
sex with the same female slave, and the owner of a mother and
daughter having sex with both. Joint owners of a female captive
are similarly enjoined from intercourse because she is viewed as
"part of a joint ownership."

The United Nations and human rights groups have accused the
Islamic State of the systematic abduction and rape of thousands
of women and girls as young as 12, especially members of the
Yazidi minority in northern Iraq. Many have been given to
fighters as a reward or sold as sex slaves.

Far from trying to conceal the practice, Islamic State has
boasted about it and established a department of "war spoils" to
manage slavery. Reuters reported on the existence of the
department on Monday.

In an April report, Human Rights Watch interviewed 20 female
escapees who recounted how Islamic State fighters separated young
women and girls from men and boys and older women. They were
moved "in an organized and methodical fashion to various places
in Iraq and Syria." They were then sold or given as gifts and
repeatedly raped or subjected to sexual violence.

Dos and don'ts

Fatwa No. 64, dated Jan. 29, 2015, and issued by Islamic State's
Committee of Research and Fatwas, appears to codify sexual
relations between IS fighters and their female captives for the
first time, going further than a pamphlet issued by the group in
2014 on how to treat slaves.

The fatwa starts with a question: "Some of the brothers have
committed violations in the matter of the treatment of the female
slaves. These violations are not permitted by Sharia law because
these rules have not been dealt with in ages. Are there any
warnings pertaining to this matter?"

Reuters

It then lists 15 injunctions, which in some instances go into
explicit detail. For example:

"If the owner of a female captive, who has a daughter suitable
for intercourse, has sexual relations with the latter, he is not
permitted to have intercourse with her mother and she is
permanently off limits to him. Should he have intercourse with
her mother then he is not permitted to have intercourse with her
daughter and she is to be off limits to him."

Islamic State's sexual exploitation of female captives has been
well documented, but a leading IS expert at Princeton University,
Cole Bunzel, who has reviewed many of the group's writings, said
the fatwa went beyond what has previously been published by the
militants on how to treat female slaves.

"It reveals the actual concerns of IS slave owners," he said
in an email.

Still, he cautioned that not "everything dealt with in the fatwa
is indicative of a relevant violation. It doesn't mean father and
son were necessarily sharing a girl. They're at least being
'warned' not to. But I bet some of these violations were being
committed."

The fatwa also instructs owners of female slaves to "show
compassion towards her, be kind to her, not humiliate her, and
not assign her work she is unable to perform." An owner should
also not sell her to an individual whom he knows will mistreat
her.

Professor Abdel Fattah Alawari, dean of Islamic Theology at
Al-Azhar University, a 1,000-year-old Egyptian center for Islamic
learning, said Islamic State "has nothing to do with Islam" and
was deliberately misreading centuries-old verses and sayings that
were originally designed to end, rather than encourage, slavery.

"Islam preaches freedom to slaves, not slavery. Slavery was the
status quo when Islam came around," he said. "Judaism,
Christianity, Greek, Roman, and Persian civilizations all
practiced it and took the females of their enemies as sex slaves.
So Islam found this abhorrent practice and worked to gradually
remove it."

In September 2014 more than 120 Islamic scholars from around the
world issued an open letter to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
refuting the group's religious arguments to justify many of its
actions. The scholars noted that the "reintroduction of slavery
is forbidden in Islam."

Additional reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein in Cairo and William
Maclean in Dubai. Editing by Ross Colvin.

Read the original article on Reuters. Copyright 2015. Follow Reuters on Twitter.